Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to paint a poetic tableau using a fixed poetry style entitled The Tableau – created by Emily Romano in October of 2008
Two crowds of demonstrators facing off across double lines of harassed, interfacing riot police each crowd spouting the bias of whichever media feed dogs have been pushing their buttons there is much darning (and worse) as the police struggle to keep them hemmed in whilst a journo darts in and tries to buttonhole some talking heads for the news needles his victims to say something outrageous but the crowd gathers round and rips into the man with the microphone, who wishes he was home this Saturday afternoon taking a nap instead of mining this admittedly rich seam of newsworthy division – newsworthy though hardly novel – politicians of both sides have been dog-whistling immigration to whip up votes for decades – a pattern that no amount of careful work with a seam picker – will undo and ease the tensions…
The granites and schists of my dark and stubborn country form the bedrock of woe that has lasted a lifetime, just waiting to poke through the drift that was built up in more active days. The strata built of depositing a family, laying down a career, the metamorphosis from one relationship to another and the occasional intrusion or outflow of molten anger or passion, built a land that seemed impregnable. But tears are relentless and oceans rise and fall, cutting into the margins and then came the ice age of retirement, the weight of ice depressing the whole and stripping all away except that bedrock and leaving even that, scarred and scratched, rounded into the low hills of the bed where I lay and even the black dog has no energy to venture out on the soggy moors that cover the degraded granite hills.
“The granites and schists Of my dark and stubborn country.”
–Nan Shepherd, “The Hill Burns” from In the Cairngorms (Edinburgh: The Moray Press, 1934)
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery, invites us to write a piece of prose poetry in no more than 144 words and using the given quote above. I should say that the subject of this piece is not my experience but that of someone close to me. As a student of Geology (and Geography) I am aware that Scotland, which is where you find the Cairngorms, has had a remarkable persistence through many geological ages and each age has added layers which may subsequently been removed in another geological age – I am not sure whether this does not give an ultimately optimistic view of things even if it requires a timescale in which we humans may turn out to be but a flash in the pan. Anyway, a metaphor suggested itself with this prompt… I hope it does not bring anyone down…
1 – There is a cake shop in Keighley, my local town, whose window always displays the most amazingly decorated cakes and this is their Christmas window display. I always stop to admire their work but this time I went in for a couple of homemade Mincepies and a chat with the utterly delightful owner…
2 – I completed the last demonstration piece of weaving on my loom – Satin Stitch. Now it may be hard to imagine that this is the stitch that produces all those shiny Satin finishes, but that’s because I was using very thick cotton yarn. So perhaps this example might be better called Weft-faced Weave. Then below, is the reverse Warp-faced Weave which is exactly what you see on the reverse of Weft-faced Weave… It is a form of exaggerated twill where the Warp skips over 5 warps before being tied in by a single stitch. If this was done with tiny, shiny silk threads, it would indeed have a shiny, satin finish.
3 – I made a Persimmon Cake yesterday and I have another in the oven as I type. Barbara’s brother went on a cruise many years ago an took up with an American lady, Cindy, and had a long-distance relationship for a couple of years. If she came over at this time of year, she would bring Persimmon Cake made to a secret family recipe which she would not reveal and which I have been trying to emulate ever since – there being plent of recipes on the internet to choose from. Als I can never achieve the moist, rich fruit cake style of Cindy’s family recipe – but the results of my experiments go down well each year nevertheless…
The Persimmon cake wrapped and drizzled with rum, ready for the family on Boxing Day…
4 – Barbara managed to make her coffee date with her best friend Jan on Friday!
5 – Jan uses the tote bag I helped Barbara make for her, every day! She says it goes with everything! FYI – furnishing fabric…
6 – A nice repeat shot of our Kunafa Cheese Bomb at the factory – don’t worry, the only thing this bomb can damage is your waistline! For those who don’t know, kunafa is having a moment – it started with Dubai Chocolate which a chocolate bar filled with Kunafa (like a very fine shredded wheat) toasted and mixed with Pistachio Sauce. Our Kunafa bomb is a pot lined with Kunafa, filled with sweetened cream cheese and sealed on top with more Kunafa – in the words of Weigh-watchers and the Pet Shop Boys – “It’s a Sin!”
7 – Found a Christmas present fo Barbara which I know she will like – I always want to choose something for her to wear but she never likes the things I choose so I am playing safe with this one 0 remind me to tell you what it was, after Christmas…
8 – Just checked the cake and lowered the temperature and put it back in for another 15 minutes – smells good! (You will note I am reprting gratitudes in real time here)…
9 – Barbara’s daughter is sending a stream of lovely videos of her trip to Bali which it seems is centred on a yoga retreat – so a happy bunny…
10 – Managed to think of 10 gratitudes for this week…
Heather Cox Richardson sours my morning with further news of the outrageous disregard for law which is building a classic dictatorship and encouraging other wannabe authoritarians around the world.
I leave to do the weeks shopping my neighbour, supervised by his wife, is remodelling a wooden box into a trug for an exhibition of snowdrops to be held in February. Life goes on…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics invites us to write about Legendary Creatures. I should remind you that I am an Old Dragon – a former pupil at The Dragon School, Oxford…
1 – The sun is shining out of an all-blue sky today, in the midst of a run of rainy days…
The beautiful Silver Birches in the churchyard behind our house shining out against the blue…
Shafts of sunlight illuminating the Willow tree, which for some reason, is still wearing its Summer clothes…
2 – My rapper Grandson was up for a couple of days as he had a gig in Leeds and on Friday I cooked a sumptuous vegetarian curry feast for him and his cousin, and his girlfriend, which went down very well with all!
3 – Grammarly believes in the Oxford comma – yayyy!
4 – Barbara managed some housework and washing-up on two days!!!
5 – I have finally finished the list of topics for my A to Z 2026 which will be on Fabrics
6 – I therefore moved on, to step 2 – making some samples of weaving to illustrate the A to Z.
Using a loom made by a toy company in 1957, but which is nevertheless a fully functioning loom, Iprooduced this sample of Plain Weave at bottom, and Twill Weave at top. Twill is what characterises Denim, for example. The eagle eyed crafters amongst you will see that the tension is gradually curving the sides of the piece inwards – rooky tension error… Well it was my first ever weave!
Plain Weave – blue cotton yarn weft on red warp.
Twill Weave.
7 – I have bought a Christmas present for Barbara – in recent years, we have eschewed giving presents to each other on the grounds that we have most everything we might want but this year, I decided to rebel…
8 – Grateful to be doing this gratitude paractice and for all the kind comments it garners…
9 – I have had two poems accepted by GAS: Poetry, Art and Music, which will be published on Christmas Day!
10 – Barbara’s eldest daughter is on a solo trip to Bali for three weeks – she has been estranged for much of the last year, but bridges have been mended and we shall see her at Christmas…
1 – Snow was forecast this week, and sure enough, it came, but I was grateful it was just a dusting on the hills since it was a drive to work day…
The view from our kitchen window
2 – The weather forecast also alerted me to wrap the olive tree against frost, in good time, so we are now stuck with this ghostly shrouded prescence for the Winter…
3 – A giant toddler has been let loose on the sky with a white crayon – anyone remember Harold and the Purple Crayon?
4 – Last weekend I was in our local town, Keighley, and saw this shop window, and as you know, I love repetition and took the first shot, but then went inside for more repeated ballas of wool. However the best bit, was I got talking to the shop owner who turned out to be a mine of information about fabrics and I mercilessly picked his brains (he was delighted – really!) for my A to Z upcoming in April, on the subject of Fabrics. He was made redundant in the ’80’s, and turned to recycling waste from the fabric mills around Yorkshire – cardboard and polythene, obviously, but also waste fabric pieces. He started sorting the latter and sold them back to mills that reprocessed them and included a percentage in new yarns. In ten years, he went form having £200 in the bank, to £100,000! Where there’s muck, there’s brass! Best of all, he alerted me to the fact that so many fabrics are “Warp knitted” as opposed to older weaving techniques – think T-shirt “Jersey” material…
5 – It was my day to take the Micro-biology samples from work, for testing at a firm at Luddenden Foot, in the Calderdale Valley. I always love this drive and the drive home “over the tops” and this Thursday it was crisp, sunny with blue skies and mercifully, there was so little traffic, I was able to dart into the little quarry/layby on the wrong side of the road and take the following pictures and a video. It is one of those spots where you could point the camera in any direction and get a beautiful shot as proved by the panoramic video. If any of you want to come and live in “God’s own county!” (Yorkshire) – you would be most welcome…
And further up, emerging onto the moors, this Wild Rose bearing rosehips…
6 – And no Ten Things of Thankful without a texture shot, this week, Autumnal, frosty leaves…
7 – We had a most enjoyable hour reading our poems at the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night Live session yesterday – read a poem about COVID lockdown in Crete, where we were fortunate to spend 6 months out of harm’s way… https://how-would-you-know.com/2025/11/this-is-crete.html
8 – Our new business (by which I mean my boss’s family) – a Self-Storage facility, opened without mishap this week and we had the first customers! I did various bits of design in the run-up and may pop in to give a hand as it gets busy…
9 – Beverley had her birthday and was delighted with the brightly coloured inside, unglazed outside Tapas bowls I bought for her in Aldi six months ago, you have to buy then when you see them as when they’re gone, they’re gone…
10 – Despite her depression, Barbara has taken charge of buying Christmas presents for the family and has almost completed the task!!!
We wake up to air as clear as water sit on the terrace under the Carob tree as the shadows move across the mountain whose spine looks like a sleeping dragon warming its reptilian blood in the morning sun waiting its moment to arise and shake itself free of olive groves, villas, and prickly pears
Plants are waging a defensive war against heat and drought and hungry creatures not only cacti, but the cups of Mediterranean Acorns are tough and scaled with prickles and dark green gloss or pale silver green dress the trees from Olive to Eucalyptus
The absence of people, as Cretans hide indoors in COVID lockdown caution makes us feel like the last people on earth as we drive the back roads where we are scarcely likely to be caught by policemen sleeping somnolent in their station in the Winter midday hour – blazing fierce, this close to Africa
No tourists to disturb the hibernating hoteliers piles of nested chairs congregate in corners of kafenio courtyards but supermarkets still shelter cars from the sun while masked customers complete their weekly shop but masks don’t stop the swapping of sparse gossip at the open-air market—fruit and vegetables piled high as ever
This is Crete in COVID lockdown Winter hotter than a British summer and dry except for the occasional storm when Greek gods play bagatelle bouncing thunderballs around the mountains and drenching the lands in torrential rain flash flooding the dry gorges and riverbeds
We steep like teabags in the many moods from spectacular sunrises bursting up from cliff-bounded sea sunrays angling through the odd cloudy day resting tourist boats on the sparkling bay awaiting their turn at the boatyard beauty parlour purple bloom on ripening black olives
Family bubbles emerge for the olive harvest for some things in life must go on as normal and for a few weeks, the groves are as busy as the centipedes that appear each morning on the terrace – there is knocking down of olives, bonfiring the prunings blueing the air with smoke plumes – testament to the busyness
And afterwards, the empty garden chairs doze off again underneath the olive trees…
1 – As touted last week, we were “baby-sitting” Bev and Don’s young Border Collie – Winnie. With my hip grumbling more and more, I chose little and often walkswise and here is Winnie on a long training lead going round the churchyard (our house in the background)
2 – The good thing about walking a dog is that you go places and see things you might otherwise miss… The bright berries wrapped around thegate pillar of the Old Vicarage caught my eye…
3 – Also this unseasonal Blackberry blossom – you’ve got ot hand it to nature – it does try…
4 – My Grandson, Dillon and his girlfriend, Izzy, arrived back from several months travelling in France, Spain and Morroco, safe and sound , and came over to take Winnie home after just 24 hours. Winnie’s enthusiasm for playing indoor fetch with an unfortunate soft-toy squirrel was inexhuastible and so it was a relief to let her go…
5 – Not on of my textures (though it could be…) but another thing I like to photograph – repeated patterns – in this case a batch of Oreo set Cheesecakes at the factory awaiting boxing up. I’m aware that in the World Heritage site – Salts Mill, the “museum” room, whatever facts and pictures of the mill it has, has not got a single piece of the fabric that was made there and these cheesecakes are destined to be equally ephemeral…
6 – I inherited this pot containing both Easter and Christmas Cactus from my late mother, although neither one blooms at the time of their eponymous festivals. Now the “Christmas” side has it’s turn. I would really like to repot them not so much because they have been in the same soil for decades – Baby Bio in their water keepd them healthy, in fact so healthy that I have had to raise the pot higher and higher because the leaves and flowers are trailing on the ground. I dare not repot them anyway, because the plant is fragile and leaves and more are easily broken off and besides, they are in a terracotta pot which I would have to break since I can’t envisage turning the plant upside down… Perhaps the maxim “If its not broken – don’t fix it!” comes into play and just keep raising the pot higher…
And flanking it are two money trees – one from my late sister – the grove on the right, and my choice of form – a single trunk at left – what’s your preference…
7 – The cat is still holding off it’s predations in the garden…
8 – I have finished my poem for the real-world Keighley Poetry Group which this month is on the subject of Kettle[s]
9 – Since Dillon and Izzy have asked me to teach them to paint (inspired by all the wonderful things they have seen on their travels) I ordered a (seconhand) book which I had but got lost along the way Thames and Hudson “A Concise History of Watercolour” and it has been like being re-united with an old friend… The pictures were (and still are) an influence on what I like to paint…
This one, by the American atrist Whistler, who did great work in England, has the abstract form in all its rectangles whilst still being completely realistic and this has led me to love doing paintings of doors and views through passageways…
